Traditionally, users have used spreadsheets and tables for storing and sharing data. Examples of existing spreadsheets include Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. Some examples of applications that support embeddable tables include Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and Dropbox Paper provided by Dropbox, Inc. of San Francisco, Calif. Spreadsheets and tables allow users to organize, store, and share data. Spreadsheets and tables are made up of rows and columns and contain cells of data. However, the fundamental design of spreadsheets and tables has not been updated in many decades and they can be difficult to navigate if they contain a large amount of data. It is particularly challenging for a user that has never seen a large spreadsheet or table to orient themselves as to the structure or organization of the data in the spreadsheet or table. Likewise, traditional spreadsheets and tables can be difficult for a user to understand, particularly if they contain a large amount of data.
Users may use formatting tools to organize spreadsheets and tables. For example, users may format a font (e.g., bold, italics, underline, etc.), change the color of a font, change the color of a cell, change the appearance of the border of a cell, merge cells, and/or change the width of columns or rows in order to organize the contents of a spreadsheet or table in order to define headers and/or sections of the document that should be viewed separately. Using formatting tools to organize a spreadsheet and/or table is inefficient and can make the underlying documents cumbersome and difficult to use. Users that are viewing a spreadsheet and/or table for the first time need to learn how the spreadsheet and/or table is organized via different formatting tools in order to understand the organization structure of the document.
Additionally, only a small fraction of spreadsheet and/or table users are authors that are responsible for creating and/or editing the content of a spreadsheet and/or table. The vast majority of users are consumers that only need to access a limited set of functionality of the spreadsheet and/or table compared to an author.
Furthermore, current spreadsheets and tables only provide limited abilities for embedding the contents of the spreadsheet or table into another document (e.g., word processing document, email, HTML webpage, presentation slide, etc.). Embedding typically requires copy and pasting a portion of the underlying spreadsheet or table.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.